


how long, how long

by smallestbrown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Distrust, Divine Pulse Angst (Fire Emblem), Divine Pulse Deaths (Fire Emblem), F/M, Tagged as both gen and romantic bc nothing romantic happens pre-timeskip, Trust, Trust Issues, what does trust look like when ur a skeptic and your teacher can turn back time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25690162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallestbrown/pseuds/smallestbrown
Summary: Claude arches an eyebrow at her and fixes her with a look. For a second, Byleth’s voice catches in her throat.His are so, so green. And they always look right at her.On the topic of trust, turning back time, and Alliance heirs who are too smart for their own good.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth & Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 89





	how long, how long

**Author's Note:**

> all claudes are good claudes, but too-clever claude has my heart. also bear with me in pretending you only get 3 divine pulse charges for the whole game. suspension of disbelief!!

**movement one.**

When the world comes right-side up again, Byleth moves quickly. The proper stance this time— _weight on your back foot, sword tilted, he’ll come from the right and you_ _need to block it, you_ have _to block it_ —and the bandit’s blow glances off her steel, sends him flying back. She watches Jeralt round a copse of trees with his lance pointed, and the marauders are off running.

“Hey, over here!”

It’s the one in yellow calling out to them. The three strangers, Byleth standing out like a sore thumb now that the four of them stand next to each other, exchange looks amongst Byleth and themselves. Respect, in the girl’s eyes. Admiration, in those of the blond boy. And as for the third—

Skepticism, though only for an instant. Byleth watches curiously as the boy swallows; his spine uncurls, he tilts his chin up and knocks his bow on his shoulder. The suspicion she thought she’d caught on his features might never have even been there, with the way he’s grinning at her now.

“That was some hit, alright,” he says genially. The blond boy at his side nods eagerly in agreement.

“Certainly,” the girl adds. “I feel that I owe you a debt for what you did just now.”

“We all do,” says the blond one. “Who knows where we would be had you not come to our aid. Thank you, truly. Thank you both,” he adds as Jeralt and his horse trot back toward them.

“Don’t mention it, kid,” her father replies. “I get the sense you’ll have more than enough chances to make it up to her.”

The walk to the monastery has Byleth’s head buzzing. A nation-wide religion, a military school for bright-eyed children. A girl on a throne, and now the young three heirs, talking amongst each other again. And this sinking feeling at her fingertips, that the whole thing had gone so, so wrong—and that for reasons she didn’t earn, didn’t understand, it had been fixed.

All the while, the same look hiding in their eyes. Respect. Admiration.

And a still, calculating, sense of distrust.

**movement two.**

She’s paired the students off for the scouting mission. Leonie and her bow are surveying ahead, Raphael padding alongside for close-combat casualties. Behind them, Byleth leads the rest of the pack, followed by Lorenz and Lysithea, with Claude and Ignatz close by. Marianne and Hilda are in the rear; Byleth likes how they look out for one another, and it’s easier to convince Hilda to fight when Marianne is concerned.

But everything feels too… Close. Dense. There’s too much cover in the forest for Byleth’s liking, too many hiding spots and viciously-cut shadows crowding her class for her comfort.

“How long do we have to do this for, again?” she can hear Hilda hiss. “We’ve been walking for _hours_.”

Marianne’s response is meek, but earnest. “I’m sure the Professor knows what she’s doing.” Hilda huffs an exaggerated sigh, and leans in closer to Marianne. Byleth hears Claude hold back a chuckle; he winks when she glances back at him, and in return she lets a smile ghost her lips.

The Golden Deer have been good to her, in that regard. The smiles come more easily, readily, than they ever did when she lived on the road. Maybe Byleth is as eager to please them as they are to please her. She lets the thought warm her down to her toes, despite the unsettling feeling of the close-knit forest.

Up ahead, she can hear Raphael and Leonie discussing meal plans for the evening. Raphael posits that he can devour more lamb steaks than she can, to which Leonie barks _I’d like to see you try_ , as if Raphael hadn’t been doing just that since they'd all arrived at the monastery a month ago.

It sounds like Lorenz is about to reply as much, when suddenly Leonie yelps in pain and falls, an arrow through her leg.

Byleth whips around, searching for the source. A lone archer is unlikely to take on a group of their size, which must mean—

The trees to their right crash apart with armed men and women. Claude fires an arrow through the neck of one of the men, and it spurs the other Deer into action. Marianne launches bolts of ice into the woods, and with a yell Hilda cracks them in half to harrowing and deadly effect. Raphael throws attackers off with steel-gloved fists and keeps them clear of Leonie, who fights to stand again, a vicious look in her eye.

Byleth hacks her way through to her. It’s a small clearing, but the Deer are packed close together without a chance for cover—easy targets for forest-hidden foes. With one hand, she grabs a hand axe and whips it at a woman making too much ground on Ignatz. The other stretches towards Leonie, grasping at strands of white magic and willing them towards her.

Then Lorenz takes an axe to the side. His cry is high-pitched and loud. The huff of Lysithea’s healing pulls his ribs back in place, but he moves slower, and his voice is cracked and scared. His eyes are wide and haunted. His hands shake around his lance.

“Hilda!” shouts Claude, and the concern so alien to his voice makes Byleth turn again. She spies Hilda just in time to see her barrel through a group of swordsmen and take a sword hilt directly to the forehead. Hilda steps back, stunned. Claude’s arrows stop them before they can attack again, but now Hilda is off her game, dizzied. She clunks back to the pack as Ignatz and Claude dispatch the rest.

More of them keep coming. Lysithea is next; an arrow through her chest, coughing up something vile and black. Then Raphael—the ground beneath him crumbles and shatters from magic, leaving Leonie propped up on a rock, bow drawn as she searches the woods.

“Teach, what do we do?” asks Claude. He’s found himself beside her, protecting his classmates from afar.

Byleth’s head spins. Push them forward? Split up into the woods? Back the way they came? Or—

She spares a glance at Claude again, his eyes frantic and anxious. He doesn’t think she can save them, but what choice does he have?

The boy doesn’t want to die. None of them do.

 _Back the way you came_ whispers the green-haired girl in her head. But back, far back. Far enough to circumvent the ambush, to gain the upper hand.

It’s a muscle, Byleth finds. Time, and her fight against it. It stretches and pulls, and exhausts her. And it needs training.

The moment is further back than those she normally grasps for. Byleth finds herself stuttering through a wave of motion, stopping and starting against time, spinning the wrong way. She gets an eyeful of the moment Lysithea coughs up blood, _far too much blood_ onto her pristine uniform, and almost stops in her tracks. But Byleth reaches further, just a bit further, just a moment more. One step more. One moment more. _One moment more_.

You always run a marathon when you race against time.

She stops, out of breath, only minutes after they’d begun their trek. The students are finding their partners, filing into the trees. Byleth’s breath catches, and Claude stops by her side.

“Teach?” he asks. His eyes—they always look like that, so doubtful—“Everything alright?”

“Sorry,” she calls out quickly to Leonie and Raphael up ahead, still breathing too hard. “I forgot. We’re going a different way.”

Claude arches an eyebrow at her and fixes her with a look. For a second, Byleth’s voice catches in her throat.

His are so, so green. And they always look right at her.

“What happened back there?” he asks as the group alters it course.

“What do you mean?” She asks, signaling to Ignatz as they keep walking to watch the trees and stay alert.

“You were out of breath. We were walking.” Claude huffs a laugh when she simply stares at him. “Forgive me, but I doubt a mercenary as tough as you is exactly _lacking_ in stamina.”

She’ll stall, she thinks. Feign ignorance until she can find the right words to dissuade him.

“Are you okay?”

With his last question, Claude’s voice slides into concern. It’s not a sound she’s heard from Claude before—not in this timeline, at least. In reality the sound is still fresh in her mind, barely a minute old, worried and desperate as he called out to Hilda among the fight.

In a split second, Byleth decides it’s not a sound she ever needs to hear from him. She reaches out to the thin strands that bind time together, weak and bendable, and pulls them back just a bit further.

 _To play with memory is a dangerous thing_ , chides a voice in her head as the world comes back into focus.

Byleth stops, and Claude, at her side, does the same.

“Let’s go a different way,” she calls out, conscious to keep her voice even and casual. The students, finding their partners and filing into the trees, shrug and move along.

“Everything alright, Teach?” he asks. He’s almost joking, this time, and Byleth swallows a sigh of relief.

“Just surprised,” she says, with a weak gesture towards the fog and the wood, before looking back at Claude. If it were sunnier out, his eyes would be the deep color of shady trees, but instead the mist makes them the brightest thing in the forest.

“It’s beautiful here,” she says.

At that, Claude smiles, though it pulls up part of his face in a wry, unconvinced expression. Maybe he recognizes his own kind of secrets in her excuse. Maybe he knows why she won’t tell him more.

“Sure is, Teach.”

**movement three.**

With time, Byleth learns to stretch the Divine Pulse further. She remains hesitant to use it, but knows she has to keep it within arm’s reach. It's a muscle. It needs training.

And she can’t risk being too late.

They’re gathering themselves after a skirmish. Tending to wounds, counting the dead, scavenging, storing, healing, dusting themselves off. Raphael helps Lysithea down from the tree where she’d been picking off stragglers. Leonie calms her steed, head pressed to its snout. Lorenz straightens his jacket.

Marianne screams.

It echoes, and it’s far off, but it’s _Marianne_ , and in an instant the Deer are tearing through the brush, reckless, loud, terrified. Leonie is the fastest among them, with Byleth hot on her heels, but it’s still Jeralt’s eager apprentice that breaks into the clearing first, who stops dead in her tracks as she is joined by her classmates, whose breath catches and strangles in her throat.

Marianne is on the ground with Ignatz’s head in her lap. His armor looks frail, bent and broken in all the wrong places. His head is turned away, but the matted blood dying his bright hair in crimson is hard to miss. It coats Marianne’s hands, even as they stutter and twitch uselessly over Ignatz’s forehead, tremor-filled as she casts heal after heal. 

He looks cold.

And Byleth, immobilized at the edge of the glade—she can run through hordes of bellowing beasts but now, now, her feet won’t take her further—thinks back to when she last saw him, and she can’t—and _oh, god_ —and—

“How long?”

They’re her thoughts, but it’s not her voice.

It’s Claude, his voice quiet, kneeling near Marianne. Heals are still snapping out of her palms like desperate spasms, but Claude’s movements are gentle in response. He takes one of her hands in both of his, cradling it carefully despite the tense, jagged way that he moves. Claude clutches it to his chest. He can’t quite look at Ignatz, so he glances back at Byleth, then turns back to Marianne.

“Please, Marianne. Can you tell me how long?”

She gasps for breath between sobs. “Too long,” she hiccups. Another spark of magic from her free hand, golden and bright, an unwelcome gleeful hue. “It feels like—it feels like an hour— _Ignatz_ ,” and Marianne crumples against Claude’s shoulder.

He holds her, but again casts his eyes to Byleth.

His eyes—they’re mourning, but they’re asking. _Pleading_. As if he knew that Byleth could, maybe—

 _An hour_. Could the goddess grant her an hour?

From Claude, Byleth’s eyes slip to the boy on the ground. Quiet, shy, ever-happy Ignatz, his artistic dreams flitting on his fingers, always out of reach. Content to paint cathedrals, knights, and saints, and his friends, and then to fight for them.

To die for them. Here, in the glade, his knee is folded the wrong way. His glasses lie broken on the ground.

He has sunrises to see, Byleth thinks. He has people to love.

 _An hour_.

If the goddess would not give it, she would take it.

Byleth reaches both hands out into the air and _grabs_ —crashes the moment between her fingers and palms, nails digging, biting into her skin—and _turns_ —spins the wheel of time back, back, jerks her muscles against time, her bones against space, until temporality sucks the breath out of her lungs and she falls, panting, to the ground. Her fingers tunnel into the grass and dirt, stuffing them under her fingernails as she grounds herself, fighting against the pull of time trying to yank her back.

“Teach?”

“ _Ignatz_ ,” she gasps, and she looks up to see Claude at her side. “Find Ignatz. _Run_.”

Claude runs. It happens that quickly; he doesn’t ask or doubt or second guess, and his eyes barely click with understanding before he’s gone. Despite everything, Byleth is suddenly filled with such gratitude towards him. She watches Claude sprint to the woods and gesture Hilda to cover her. Byleth leans back on her knees.

An hour would have to be enough.

And it is. Claude finds Ignatz just as he engages with a soldier in the glade, and barely emerges from behind a tree before he’s sending a deadly arrow through the woman’s eye.

They gather themselves. Tend to their wounds. Lorenz straightens his jacket, Leonie calms her steed, and Lysithea scampers offs a tree with Ignatz and Raphael’s help.

Claude finds her as they’re walking back to the monastery. She knows his question even before she reads it in his eyes or hears it on his tongue, because it’s not the first reality where he’s asked it; it’s just the first one she’ll let him remember. The first one she hasn’t turned back.

Yet.

“What happened back there?”

Stall. Feign ignorance. He doesn’t know this refrain yet, though the false pulse in her chest certainly does.

“A battle, Claude. I’d have thought you’d be familiar with those by now.” She can’t look him in the eye, knows she won’t like the way that his voice and his gaze don’t align.

“Teach.” He puts a hand on her arm, and they fall to the back of the marching order wordlessly, the other students too preoccupied with their victory to notice. “One second you’re hailing Leonie to fire off a volley, the next you’re heaving on the ground calling for Ignatz, who’s a mile away.”

He drops his hand, and laughs—scoffs, almost; it’s a breath that’s more a comma, more an expression of disbelief—yet his eyes are sharp and prying. It reminds her of their first meeting. Claude rarely asks for what he knows he’s looking for, and says what he means even half as often. She hates that it pricks her heart to think that.

She thinks of turning back again. _Don’t let Claude ask it_ , she thinks, because if he gets too close to the truth, him and his distrustful eyes, _y_ _ou don’t know how he’ll react_. For some reason, how he reacts matters to Byleth more than she cares to examine.

“That was some sprint,” he adds, quiet, and the sound of it stops her short. It’s the same concern she’d heard when he’d called to Hilda, but here, it’s cautious. Earnest. “I’m glad you told me to run. I barely made it in time.”

Byleth drops the hand that had risen, ready to make him forget again. Instead, she swallows.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “For making it on time.”

Claude pauses, and she meets his eyes, willing him to understand how grateful she is, but that she _can’t_ —not yet. Not until the smile always plastered on his face reaches his eyes. Not until she knows that the words he doesn’t say won’t cut her like a knife.

Here, on the road, far from the glade and the blood in Ignatz’s hair, Claude's eyes are biting and pleading, and Byleth utters an apology in different words.

“Thank you… For trusting me.” She breathes. “Then, and now.”

His gaze on her is so piercing it almost hurts, but eventually Claude nods. He squeezes her shoulder and makes his way back up the line to speak with Marianne, leaving Byleth behind. She lets out a breath that only adds to the weight on her shoulders.

But then she sees Ignatz in front of them, sees Raphael clap him on the back with a loud laugh.

And a little bit of the weight lifts.

**movement four.**

At first,

Time is a muscle. It stretches and pulls and tires. Needs kneading and coaxing and training. If she goes a full moon without invoking the power of the goddess in her chest, it becomes more difficult to reach back the next time she needs it. And Byleth _knows_ that every second counts, so she practices. She keeps herself sharp.

Monica’s knife is sharper.

She pulls the moment back once, twice—but Solon is faster, too. When she wrenches the flow of the world backwards for a third time and he cuts her path yet again, she lets out a wail. Jeralt’s eyes cut to her at the sound, even as he falls heavily into the wet grass.

Byleth crawls to him, feeling for the throb of the Divine Pulse to call upon it again. Something in the space between her ribs bites painfully into her bones. She knows she can’t do it again. _Three times, then._ And that’s it.

She holds Jertalt’s hand against his chest as he coughs up blood, and thinks bitterly that at least she won’t have to watch her father die a fourth time.

Then,

Time is a blur. Desaturated, grey, and grey-blue, the days that follow bear no distinction other than the shape of the clouds or the weight on her eyelids. Byleth realizes, distantly, that there was a day where she didn’t leave her room at all. No one speaks of it, not even Seteth.

The Deer are kind, each in their own, stuttering way. A basket of sweets shows up at her door, filled with Lysithea’s favorites. Lorenz has added in tea blends whose calming and restorative properties he’s eulogized about before.

Leonie weeps. The tears are gone whenever Byleth sees her, but her eyes are red when she comes to class with her chin up, silver necklace polished bright with nerves. Byleth does not know how to comfort her, but Ignatz and Raphael do, and that is kindness enough.

She spies Marianne in the Cathedral, whispering fervent prayers to the goddess that sleeps in the empty pocket of Byleth’s heart, and that couldn’t save her father, no matter how she had tried.

And Claude—

It is clear that Claude doesn’t know how to comfort her, either—not that Byleth would know how to ask, or what comfort she could need. More and more, Byleth feels outside of her actions and needs. She floats through time because she knows she cannot fight it. It scares her to feel so beyond her own body, but she finds solace in the impassivity of it. 

Time should not be partial. Time should not _care_. Time takes and takes and takes.

Time is a graveyard.

And that’s where he finds her, always. He seems averse to coming to her room; no matter how prying his eyes, how curious and slanted his questions, Claude doesn’t intrude into her space. It seems out of character, but Byleth doesn’t have the strength to consider it, or express her thanks. Or whatever feeling she thinks she should be feeling, but can’t muster up.

Mostly, Claude sits a fair distance a part from her, the two of them facing her parents’ graves. He hums, sometimes. That helps. It gives her mind something to focus on and follow, rather than the aimless wandering that occupies her wake.

She doesn’t recognize the melodies. That helps too.

He speaks up, once, in words and glances she didn’t expect.

“I don’t mean to pry, but... Have you cried yet, Teach? I just find... Found. That it helps.” He looks to her, quickly. They’re sitting far apart in the graveyard once more, and meeting his eyes, Byleth feels her throat close a little.

“Even if you don’t know what to cry about,” he adds, tugging at some grass and letting it catch in the wind. “Sometimes just having the tears means... something else needs to happen. Lets you take another step.”

Slowly,

Time becomes a garden. It grows from seeds in wet and damp earth, but it grows, nonetheless. A steady sprouting from small to less-small. A blooming into something real.

Something about having him—someone, really, anyone, but somehow it becomes _him_ —by her side, pulls her spirit back to earth. To things that feel and hurt and live. 

And Byleth decides that time may be impartial, and time may take and take, but Byleth will take back just as much.

And she will not lose them again.

**movement five.**

Claude is good at finding her. As life ticks on in its usual direction, Byleth learns that Claude is someone who watches people not out of boredom, or entertainment, but out of what he sees as necessity. It serves him well—he's always at the side of whoever needs an extra hand, right when they need it the most, without them having to ask. He builds favors and gratitude easily by doing so. And he learns much by the same means; he watches what people say, and how they act, and who they act around.

It’s how he learned about the myth of the Goddess tower. It’s how he found her during the dance. It’s how he saw Byleth stealing away after the ball, and it’s how he knew no one followed her up the tower steps but him.

After all, to know all this, Byleth had to have been watching him, too.

He settles beside her easily on the stone floor across from the window, and for a moment, they sit there quietly, watching the stars and the spaces between them.

They’ve gotten better at this—whatever this is, between them—since that day in the glade that he doesn’t remember, since the days in the graveyard that he does. Though they’ve yet to explain them, their silences make sense to each other. Claude lets himself stop questioning Byleth’s decisions. Byleth leans on Claude to make the right call when it matters.

It’s slow, and hesitant. Sometimes his eyes cut at her sharply and she’ll wince despite herself. But Claude always put a hand on her elbow and whispers a quiet sorry. And Byleth tells him she forgives him, and the smile that creases his eyes, a warm one, fond and real, is one she’s grown to trust and crave. 

“I don’t know how you do what you do,” Claude says, breaking the silence. His knees are bent, propping up his arms, and to Byleth he looks long and loose. A bit freer than he normally gets to be. Lets himself be.

He reads her silence right and continues. “In a fight, or anywhere else for that matter, I pride myself on being three steps ahead at all times. But you... It’s like you’ve finished the race already, the way you look at the fight sometimes. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Her pulse quickens, anxious, but—this is _Claude_ , now. Not Claude, clothed-in-yellow boy from a random fight, staring unwitting daggers at her as she saves Edelgard’s life. This is _Claude_ , house leader, perceptive watcher, fierce friend. His voice isn’t accusatory. It’s curious, and a little disappointed.

And not in her. In himself.

“You know, when I’m trying to fall asleep, I run through some of our old battles, wondering how we can do better. And it’s just... Sometimes, it’s so close.” Claude sighs, rakes a hand through his hair, combing through moonlight. Byleth moves away from the wall, legs crossed, to look at him better. He lets his arm drop back on his knee, and rolls his head to meet her gaze.

Claude has the greenest eyes she’s ever seen.

“Do you remember one of our first missions, scouting in Mahgred?” he asks.

_Leonie, an arrow through her knee. Lysithea, coughing blood, and Claude, his concern so clear—_

“I remember.”

“If we’d gone _through_ the woods, like we’d first planned, we’d have been ambushed. But you took us around, and we got the drop on them instead. You saved us.”

He sighs again, and Byleth is struck by the fact that this is perhaps the most honest Claude has ever been with her. Too often, his eyes tell a different story than his lips, but here, now, and more and more these days, the two align.

“So much of what we do is up to chance. I don’t have to tell you that. But it... Worries me. That I can’t always see what’s coming.”

Something flares in her chest, a few degrees to the left of her spine. An urge. What if she did tell him?

This is _Claude_ , who knows of her family, her birth, the wrong and right parts of her, and still decides that he’d rather spend time by her side. What _if_?

“What I mean to say—what I’m trying to say, Teach... Is thank you. I don’t know how many of us would have survived the last few months if it weren’t for you.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out, anchoring his gaze on hers.

“I’ll protect you,” Byleth says immediately. She doesn’t know what else to reply, but she knows that _this_ is a truth as immutable as any. Byleth will twist and turn and take and topple whatever she needs to so she can keep her students safe. She feels the sentiment acutely, deep in her bones. It’s anchored itself in her chest where a heart ought to be, somewhere where a goddess lives and tells her she can change whatever she pleases.

She’ll tell him. Not now, but one day. She will. For some reason, Byleth feels that this godly part of her false heart is one he’ll be careful with.

Claude smiles. “It’s good to not have to do this alone, Teach. Really good.”

She holds his gaze until he inhales sharply, eyes cutting away from her. “Look at me,” he adds with half a laugh, “chattering on when I’m sure you just came up here for some peace and quiet. I’ll leave you to it.” As he moves to rise, Byleth puts a hand on his arm, faster than her own thoughts.

“Stay,” she says, and the genuineness of Claude’s responding smile keeps her warm in the cold of the tower, long after they’ve gone their separate ways.

**movement six.**

She knows she’s earned his trust, but now she knows she has it. Just like Claude knows that his dreams are hers. On nights where it’s hardest for Byleth to sleep without flashes of her allies and friends haunting her, blood-covered and ghastly, his dreams are what she clings to. A new dawn. A new day.

Dawn breaks gritty and unwelcome as the students prepare to draw weapons against one of their own.

The Knights of Serios lead the fore against Edelgard’s army, and Byleth holds her students back for just one more moment. She looks each of them in the eye, one by one: Leonie’s grim determination, Lorenz’s dignified anger, Ignatz’s anxious concern. Commits each to memory. Binds them tight against her heart.

She will not lose them.

“My friend,” Claude says as they begin to take position. Byleth feels his hand on her shoulder and turns.

His wyvern armor cuts sharp and shining across his chest, a brutal silver that dulls the bright gold of his house. He looks worn and tired, but there is something else she can’t place.

“I don’t know if there’s much else to say,” Claude starts, dropping his hand. “I just wanted to...”

Byleth watches as he hesitates, but his expression is kind. Firm. He bites his lip.

“The day may not go the way we want it to the first time,” he says, “but we’ll make it through, friend.”

His words pull her back short, but Claude takes her hand. His gauntlets are uncomfortable against the skin of her palm, but his gaze isn’t. His tentative smile isn’t. The brilliant green of his eyes has never been as true.

“I don’t doubt you for a moment.”

The clash of thunder and metal break a mile away. The army approaches. His gaze cuts away to the sound, but returns to Byleth just as faithful. The feeling settles warm and strong in the pit of her heart.

“We’ll make it through,” he adds as he squeezes her hand one last time. “All of us.”

“All of us,” Byleth repeats. She believes it.

The third time she falls, she knows she was wrong to believe, but does not think it the worst kind of fate. She may lose them, but they will still live.

She holds that thought close when she finds there is nothing left to reach for. No ledge or loose rock to grab, no strand of time to pull on, no third chance at life inside of her.

Nothing left to call on.

There is nothing she can do but fall.

And more than enough time to do it.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this fic for who-knows-how-long, and finally I decided to just split it into two parts and post part one. part two is a good 2k long atm, with much more to write! but please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed it so far :)
> 
> i'm also primarily an artist, and you can find my stuff & come and hang [tumblr](https://smallestbrown.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/smallestbrown)!


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